faith unfaded

I said those words half-joking in a Gen X chat group. We were discussing fitting in with “our generation” when I’d commented that I felt like a Gen Z/Boomer hybrid with millennial leanings and Gen X memories.

I feel at ease with every generation, always have. Quite simply, I love people. I can connect with a two-year old or a 92-year old easily.

I pick up on new trends and lingo quickly and have the memory of an elephant. I can tell you the exact layout of the food court in the Alexandria Mall from 1982. Or the layout of the animal cages at the Alexandria Zoo a decade before that.

I can hold my own in a game of Canasta and control the length of a game of Candyland. My friend age range is wide.

Why is this? I wondered. I’d always been this way and loved that about myself. It not only made me a pro playing “generation gap” games, it made me a pro at connecting with people. Connections are vital.

God is no respector of persons (Acts 10:34) and doesn’t separate us as a census taker would into age, race, and socioeconomic classes. I will not either. We are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28). I belong everywhere.

And yet I also belong nowhere.

I feel it, this peculiarity in myself, that often sets me apart. I don’t always fit in. I definitely don’t fit a mold and don’t even think about putting me in a box.

I belong to Him alone, those days of seeking peer acceptance long gone. He set me on a rock and sequestered me from the world.

If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. John 15:9